


Stars I shall find

by RightHandofFenHarel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dream Sequences, Established Relationship, M/M, Major Character Death (But Not Really), Minor Character Death, Surrealism, Survivor Guilt, Time Skips, Unreliable Narrator, implied suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RightHandofFenHarel/pseuds/RightHandofFenHarel
Summary: After the loss of Starkiller, Hux struggles to deal with his feelings for Kylo, his feelings about Kylo’s role in the disaster, and of course his own failings.  He experiences the breadth and depth of human emotion and does not approve at all.





	Stars I shall find

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for the KRB Mini Bang prompt:
> 
> Armitage Hux (in his mid-twenties, naked, scrawny) standing on a diving board above an abandoned swimming pool on Arkanis. The surroundings are dull and grey, a moment before the rain hits. Instead of water, the pool is filled with black liquid. Kylo/Ben is emerging out of it, reaching for him, a hungry look on his face. 
> 
> Due to real life issues, both of us got kinda behind. Art by the incredibly talented hxxxm will be added toward the end of the month.

I will make this world of my devising,

Out of a dream in my lonely mind,

I shall find the crystal of peace,--above me

**_Stars I shall find._ **

_From_

**_There Will Be Rest, Sara Teasdale_ **

 

* * *

 

If a dream is a wish your heart makes, then Armitage Hux’s heart aches for some goddamn rest.

For as long as Armitage can remember, he has been having this dream.   As a child it was just a little pond surrounded by small trees and waves of grass fluttering gently in the breeze.  The dream is always vivid, almost real.  There are times when it actually may be so.  If he were to be asked about it, he certainly wouldn’t be able to convincingly say one way or the other.  But then again, who is there to ask about such things?  Perhaps it had been real once.  He doesn’t remember ever visiting such a place, but regardless, he wishes it to exist so it does.  His favorite part is when the storm clouds roll in and the wind whips his hair into his eyes and the smell of dirt and rain fills his lungs even before the first drop hits his bare skin.  The drops never actually come, only a fine warm mist that envelops him like a favored blanket as he skips stones across the water.

The dream alters as Armitage ages.  In his adolescence, the pond solidifies into the swimming pool at the academy.  He is blissfully alone, a welcome reprieve from the constant mass of humanity that is ever present while at school. In class, his superiors drone on.  When he studies, his peers are there chattering away.  When he eats, idle talk around him crowds against his own internal thoughts.  When he sleeps, well, there seems to be a pattern here.  Of course during breaks, there is his father.  He isn’t allowed here in Armitage’s sanctuary.  No one is.  He lets another boy in once to dive and frolic in the water with him but that doesn’t end well.  Rain does fall that day and the heavy drops turn the water scarlet.  He never sees the boy again and no other visitors try after that.  The pool is always calm and warm and Armitage lays on his stomach, head turned so that the rough concrete presses into a cheekbone, a delicate hand brushing through the top few inches of water.  He falls asleep and the clouds roll in.  Can one fall asleep in a dream?  Armitage doesn’t actually care.   Even in his slumber he can smell the calm before the storm.   Petrichor, someone had called it once.   Something about stone and blood and gods.  He likes the sound of that.

Hux isn’t sure when the diving board appeared.  He’s an adult now and it’s there so maybe it always has been.  These days he sits on the end of it overlooking his pool.  His little empire.  Very occasionally the board shudders and he embraces the oscillation.  In life, flexibility is both a virtue and a detriment depending on the circumstances.  It is both horrifying and comforting knowing that the diving board has no concept of such things.  Diving boards aren’t sentient so the fact that he even thinks about what the diving board has any concept of is preposterous.  Here he is thinking it anyways.  The wind stirs.  It’s that time of the evening.  Hux knows now that the smell he loves so much is simply a mixture of plant oils, bacterial spores, and ozone.  He wishes he didn’t.

 

* * *

 

Tonight, when Hux walks out onto the diving board, he sees a small child sitting by the edge of the pool across from him.  No one is allowed here, he reminds himself.  She is so far away but when her face breaks into an endearing smile, he is sitting right next to her.  He sits at a tea party with his daughter by the side of the old abandoned swimming pool.  He knows he doesn’t have a daughter, and yet, he does.  That detail isn’t something important enough to worry about right now.  Not when this gorgeous little creature is pouring him pretend tea in minuscule cups.  She has her father’s dark eyes and his own sharp bone structure.  What an odd thing to notice.  She hands Hux a cup and he eats an imaginary finger sandwich.  Her hair hangs in dark auburn waves about her shoulders.  Hux smiles.  

“Papa, look!”  Hux turns to see the little girl plucking water droplets out of the pool one by one.  She doesn’t need to touch the water; the droplets simply rise when she moves her hands as if conducting a symphony.  When she has a small collection at her command she begins to blow them away like bubbles on the wind.  Some of them change colors as they float away.   A familiar, mischievous glint in her eyes betrays her intentions as the largest of the bunch floats directly over Hux’s head and pops.  Hux splutters as pink pool water soaks him.   The little girl giggles when he grabs her and pulls her into his lap for a soggy hug.  

“Where did you learn how to do that?”  Hux already knows the answer.  He kisses the top of her head, then spins her to face him.  

****“Daddy would have taught me!”  Her smile never fades, though Hux is suddenly pierced with a palpable sadness.  What could that possibly mean?

It is suddenly very obvious what his daughter’s name is.  Rae snuggles back into Hux’s embrace.  “I wish we could stay together, Papa.”

****“Of course we can, dearest.”  He knows it’s a lie but doesn’t know why.

****She shakes her head.

“Daddy’s dead, so I can’t be here anymore.”  She giggles because it’s such a silly thing not to understand.

****“Why did you let that happen, Papa?  Why did you kill them all?”  Rae asks it with no venom, just the wonder of any normal child trying to understand the world.   Why is the sky blue?  Why can’t I touch the stove?  Why did you let all your men die?  Why are you so worthy of survival when they weren’t? Simple inquiries with simple answers, surely.

Hux frowns and looks into her eyes.  They almost glitter as light catches on small flecks of gold.  Like stars hung on the black canvas of space.  He closes his eyes against her innocent stare.

There is biting cold and searing heat.  Hux stands on the precipice as it all crumbles beneath him.  Cracks on crevices on fissures separate him from his destiny. He had built it stone by stone.  No, not stone,  pillars of the strongest steel.  He’d wired it with care and precision and fitted it with his own unique brand of creature comforts, but now it is irreparably damaged.  Changed.  Gone.  His fate, his future, his whole life is but a fine particulate, following the example of the ground slipping from beneath his feet.  There had been a plan.  A path.  A map to greatness that he had drawn.  But he is neither grand cartographer nor engineer nor soldier nor emperor now.  It all slips away in the space of minutes.  Seconds even.  With every falling rock and sublimated chunk of ice it slips away.

Armitage is wet.  No, not wet.  Suffocating.  Drowning under the warmth of the blood on his hands.  It consumes him.  A thick black tar entangled in his hair, filling his nostrils, his mouth.  Everything and nothing.  Drowning two men, glacially slow, yet altogether too quick.  A liquid flake of snow drops from a dark eyelash to run down a feverish cheek.  He watches his legacy drain and mix with the blood on Ren’s lips.  Metallic yet sweet when he tastes it on his own and then, it too, is gone.  

Ren’s unfocused eyes flash red, then white then dance with unnatural stars.  He’s seen those unnatural stars before.  Moments ago wasn’t it?  Or years in the future?  He’s repeatedly hitting his head on the brick wall that is logic trying to remember.  Trying to forget.  

Hux knows that Starkiller is gone even before the rescue shuttle shutters and glittering ash races past his viewport.  Then there is just the cold embrace of hyperspace.   Then nothingness.  Not nothingness.  A pool.  His pool.  Tainted by darkness.

 

* * *

 

The first thing that Hux consciously recognizes is brown.  Brown eyes.  Warm brown eyes and the small hint of a smile. Something tickles at his neck and he bats the offending intruder away.  His fingers tangle in a mess of thick black hair.  

“Ren,” the word catches in his sleep laden throat and comes out as more of an incoherent groan. “What could you possibly want at this ungodly hour?”

Ren schools his expression into something very serious.  Hux only has time to register vague concern before he gets his answer. 

“I want to eat every last one of your freckles.”  Ren lunges at him and mouths at his bottom lip.

“What?”  It comes out garbled and Hux can feel teeth now, insistent and on the edge of painful as his lip is pulled further between Ren’s lips.  Ren’s lips.  Well, those are quite lovely, actually.  “Give me back my face.”

“Never.”  Despite his words, Ren moves on to nipping at Hux’s neck.

“Don’t you have something better to do than creep around here watching me sleep?”  Ren shakes his head into Hux’s collarbone and wraps his arms tighter around Hux’s waist.  So warm and soft.

“You do have your own quarters, you know.”  Hux tries valiantly to extricate himself from Ren’s grasp.  He succeeds only in tucking his head under Ren’s chin and kneading into the muscles of Ren’s shoulders, drawing him closer.

“Under construction.”  The mind reels at the possibilities of what’s going on there.  And what it’s doing to his budget.

“So I take it, there’s nothing I can do to make you leave.”  

“Nope.”

Hux sighs.  Today is one of Ren’s affectionate days.  He never knows what version of the man he’ll get each morning. Sometimes he wakes to the angry storm that is the First Order’s most volatile weapon, Kylo Ren.  On these days, his first observation is usually the smell of something burning.  Then the screaming starts.  Kylo Ren doesn’t use words so much on these days, just a string of feral growling and obscenities.  

Sometimes Hux wakes to a dampness on his chest and the sounds of sniffles.  These are the days when Hux is stuck with Ben Solo, although he keeps that admission locked away in the deepest recesses of his thoughts as possible.  There is no faster way to turn the sad, scared little boy curled up beside him into, the version of Kylo Ren that Hux loathes, than to allow that thought to surface enough that Ren can find it.

These days are the worst.  Hux has no interest or skill in comforting others.  No desire to hear about yet another tragic backstory.   He has always had to create his own comfort during trying times.  It is not his responsibility to create it for someone else.  Ren should get his own pond.

And sometimes.  Well, sometimes it’s this.  Kylo waking him with a smile and a kiss.  He knows how this ends.  It ends sitting on the sofa, braiding long black plaits, while Ren falls asleep in his lap, despite the fact that it was Kylo who had woken him up in the first place.  It ends with the feeling of silken strands wound around each finger and nails scratching at Ren’s scalp just hard enough to ground him into the fact that this is reality.  Which one of them needs convincing?  Probably both.  It’s dreadful.

Ren, of course, has it much easier.  While Hux wakes each day trying desperately to figure out why he would ever do such a thing and simultaneously trying to decipher Ren’s personality du jour, Ren only has to sit there and wait.  Hux is rational.  He is consistent.  Ren always knows what he’s getting.  Surly.  

Ren kisses him again as his head is cradled in those overlarge hands.  Warm, rough thumbs brush against his cheekbones as Ren groans and licks useless platitudes into his mouth.

“Do you remember the first time you invited me here?”

_Ren moans like a Corellian whore as soon as his back hits the soft sheets.  Long dark waves and pale skin against the crimson fabric.  So much power under his fingers, gladly acquiescing to Hux’s whims.  It’s beautiful_.

“No. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been my daily nuisance for time immemorial.”

“Yours.” Kylo hums contentedly and his eyes glitter with hope, like his namesake.

“No.”  Hux’s voice is clear and commanding, but Kylo wasn’t designed to obey his orders.  

Hux sits sideways on the diving board, feet dangling over the edge.  Kylo lays across his lap in a rare moment of calm and contentment.  No one is allowed here but again Kylo doesn’t take direction well.  Hux braids his hair and the clouds roll in.   A single drop of rain lands on Kylo’s cheek.  His eyelashes flutter.  The droplet bleeds from translucent to crimson and rolls down to catch on the corner of his mouth.  Hux wipes it away, careful not to further disturb Ren.  He turns his face to the sky.

“No.” Hux’s voice is clear and commanding and the weather obeys.

Hux never truly cares for others.  He leads by example and knows that contented soldiers are useful soldiers.  Hux cultivates a personality that serves his purposes.  He can charm and disarm when needed then just as easily flip to cold and calculating when the situation shifts.   He knows every name and identification number for every person who serves under him.  He knows their interests and dislikes and next of kin and so on and so on.  It isn’t because he cares.   It is because it is useful.  Useful in order to inspire.  Useful in order to cajole.  Useful in order to get what he wants.  What the Order needs.

He never truly cares.

Which is why it is so strange that here on the diving board in his perfect sanctuary, he leans back to watch the heavy rain clouds pass above him and thinks of those lost on Starkiller.   Death does not phase him, he has seen it in all forms.  Starvation, torture, endless battles.  Suicide, execution, a well placed deadly insect.  The outcome is all the same in the end, so what does it really matter?  A man exists and then doesn’t.   Simple.  Clean.

When the galaxy is peaceful and ordered once more the methods used to get there won’t be discussed or questioned.  All will be well.   So why now, as his fingers tangle in Kylo’s hair, lungs inhaling to match his sleeping breath does it all seem to matter immensely?  

He feels.  

He feels everything.

The death and destruction and pain of the whole galaxy crushed into the space of a single grain of sand and nestled in his chest, then scraping at his throat.  A nagging tickle that a cough can’t fix.   It racks his whole body and doubles over, head hanging off the board, hair brushing the surface of the water.  Kylo has disappeared but he pays that no mind as he desperately tries to exorcise what ever this is from his body.  Water.  He needs water and so he dunks his head below the surface and takes a desperate gulp.  Darkness pervades the water, but the sun peeks through the clouds and casts dancing light across his vision. He tries to pull back out of the water but to no avail.  He’s falling now.  Fully submerged with no up, no down.  Suspended in the deep warm darkness of this pain.  Kylo sits below him, smirking with a hand extended.  Hux cannot reach him.  He doesn’t even know if he wants to.  He blinks and he feels the ground of Starkiller crumbling under his feet again.  Dust in his hands and his hair.  He opens his eyes and sees Marill, hand raised in accusation.  Identification number FZD1752488767.  He and his wife just had a baby.  7lbs 2oz.  A girl named Elodie.  Marill is skilled at technical writing and minor repair work and dislikes oatmeal. He enjoys painting in his off duty hours.  His request to alter the wall color in room two of the special family quarters used for visitation in non-combat zones on the Finalizer has recently been approved.  Half a mural of a lush green farm has been completed above the child’s bassinet.  His funeral number SK217.

Hux turns away and finds himself at funeral number SK67933.  The room has a warm glow reflected off of dark wood paneling.  Under different circumstances one might even consider it to be cozy and welcoming.  He straightens to attention, then clasps his hands behind his back.  As commanding officer, he stands vigil near the front of the room and nods respectfully as mourners file in.  There is a rustle of fabric in the back of the room that draws his attention.  Kylo, dressed from neck to toes in a gown of heavy black velvet and dripping in gold and jewels, leans nonchalantly, arms crossed, against a statue of a woman with arms outstretched and a look of gentle compassion.  Appropriate or not, Hux does nothing to hide his disgust at the spoiled princeling’s behavior.  He can feel the revulsion creep across his skin from the slight squint in his eyes down to the snarl that curls across his lips.  Kylo grins lasciviously, winks, then leaves with a dramatic twirl.  His robes billow and catch the hands of the statue of the beatific woman.   It slowly tilts.  By the time that it crashes to the floor Kylo is long gone.  When Hux’s gaze returns to the crowd, each of the mourners holds an individual piece of the broken statue.  The room stretches to eternity as thousands upon thousands of soldiers kneel and offer him their fractured ceramic tributes.  He looks to the gaping black hole in the wake of Kylo’s exit and the weight of expectation crushes him.  

It is Ren’s indifference that sets him alight.  Every synapses fires in the pounding refrain of What was it this time?  What did I miss?  How do I fix it? Ren is too absorbed in his own brand of self loathing to ever truly break his heart the way a father can his son’s, but that does not matter when Hux’s pulse begins to pound and sweat greases his palms.  His father is dead but he awakens in Armitage’s mind every time Ren turns away from him in disdain. He stands in the corner, a sinister smile lighting up his face in anticipation of his favorite bloodsport, putting Armitage in his place.  Brendol’s mood is more difficult to anticipate than even Ren’s and his anger more volatile if less effective in its destructive capabilities.  But like Ren’s despondent days, it is the quiet times which bother Hux the most when dealing with his father.  His indifference is a harbinger of complete catastrophe.  

No matter how often Hux insists to Ren that abandonment is a blessing, he heeds the spectral call of his father without question. He hates him, but he walks towards him anyways.  He wants to run, yet his feet lead him forward and he takes his place, a waif like shadow always two paces behind.  His father’s mood seems favorable but that sets Armitage on edge all the more.  The air turns thick around him as he tries to process.  Indifference and expectation balanced precariously upon his shoulders.  He waits.  Waits to speak.  Waits to be noticed.  Awaits berating.  Awaits praise?  Can Brendol feel his apprehension? Can he hear his thoughts wildly spinning? He tries to process. Tries to anticipate.  General Hux’s job is to stay five steps ahead of the enemy.  Prepare and strike swift and furious.  Armitage’s job is to stay five steps ahead of Brendol.  To know the answer before he’s even learned the question.  He waits for the precise moment to be at hand to take a last deep breath before being plunged into a tumultuous sea.  He waits on Arkanis as the planet is bombarded.  Waits for rescue, waits for death.  What would that be like?  To suddenly not exist anymore.  It’s not a wish or hope so much as a curiosity.  An end to the interminable waiting.

The need to avoid slowly turns into the ability to stand still, indefinitely.  Fighting oneself is the ultimate waste of time and energy so he simply stops.  

Then, for one truly terrifying second Hux sees a galaxy where Ren and Brendol exist in his reality at the same time.  

 

* * *

 

Snoke looms above him in their audience chamber.  The meeting is monotonous.  Snoke drones on and on.  My apprentice this and General that.  Hux doesn’t care.  He is just a means to an end anyways.

Hux oft wonders what is it about the two of them that Snoke finds particularly valuable.  He isn’t naive enough to believe the disseminated propaganda about either Ren or himself.  He sees himself as capable enough, of course.  Even exceptional in some ways like his schematics both technological and psychological.  But surely Snoke has a long line of men at the ready to serve a similar purpose.  Or at least he does before Hux disposes of them first.  He sees how Snoke pits Ren against him, whispering promotions and conquest in Hux’s ear and unlimited power and small kindnesses into Kylo’s.  Kylo who unravels at even the slightest hint of affection, the slightest hint that someone doesn’t find him a simple waste of space.  It’s just too easy.  Having employed the practice to his own ends, Hux sees through all of it, and yet when the opportunity arises to best Ren in front of the Supreme Leader, he always takes it.  It baffles him even as he strides triumphant from the audience chamber.  Snoke must know that he knows but the old man underestimates him.

Snoke leans forward, savoring the tension. Hux knows he cherishes this, the opportunity for his apprentice to sharpen his claws against a worthy adversary.  Perhaps that is what Hux’s true use is.  He is the whetstone to Ren’s blade.  The forge to temper his steel. The target against which Ren learns to calibrate his sights.  Unfortunately for the Supreme Leader, Hux is not a tool to be wielded for the profit of others.  He is no hound whose teeth have been ground to dust.  His bite is far more lethal than Snoke suspects and he is a patient man. Hux can bide his time. His bite will be all the more effective when Snoke no longer suspects him of treachery.  This failure can be an opportunity.  Hux will not be a rung on Kylo Ren’s ladder to greatness.  He should concern himself only with his own ascendency.  It should  be Hux’s star that will rise in the east come morning, not Ren’s.  The thought that binary stars do exist in the vast universe is unwelcome and Hux pushes it back down into whatever cavern of his mind it crawled out of.

When Hux exits the audience chamber, Kylo is already leaning against the wall, self satisfied and smug.  Hux glares and tries to sweep past him in as an intimidating a manner as possible, but Kylo stops him with a firm hand on his arm.  He spins him around and pulls him closer, curling his arms around his shoulders and neck.

“Come now, General.. Don’t be a sore loser.” Kylo tries to kiss him but Hux pushes away.

“This isn’t a game, Ren..”

“Of course it isn’t, but there still has to be a winner in the end.  You knew it was always going to be me.”  

“You know nothing of what you toy with.”  

“Perhaps you’re right. This has to end at some point.”

Hux rolls his eyes “To what are you referring?”

“Us, General.  This…” He motions between them, “had to end at some point.”  Something grips Hux about that gaping open wound that is the center of his chest.  He doesn’t care.  There isn’t an “us.” They are insignificant.

“Why?”  The question tumbles out unbidden and his voice cracks.  Kylo’s eyes sparkle dangerously, but the smile doesn’t reach his lips.  

“Because one day one of us will be Emperor and the other will be dead.”

 

* * *

****

A red bright light streaks across his mind.  Where once was pride now lies only numbness.  His mind and eyes are blank.  The joy and adulation never comes.  It was a mistake.  He doesn’t make mistakes.  His path was clear and with it would come a crown.  Now, only a wreath of flame circles his head, consuming him, oxygenated by his life’s work.  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.  It wasn’t the plan.  Hux plans and executes to perfection and a perfect execution is where he finds himself.  A crowd of millions come to see the final end of General Starkiller.   Perhaps they feel their cause is noble, a just end to the man who killed so many, but the fervor and boundless glee they bring with their vengeance bends more towards the antics of spoiled children than righteousness.   It only pushes him to stand taller, intense gaze lifted higher.  This farce is disordered and disgusting and he well go down showing them what it is to be civilized.

But that won’t be the way.  It happens in a small courtyard.  No, more of an alleyway outside the cell block.  Four resistance soldiers if they can even be called that.  Generals stand toe to toe, then one retreats.  Far away where her hands will not be sullied by this death. He knows she gives the order though.  Personal retribution for everything that the Order took from her. Everything that he took from her.  Ren is already dead of course.  He’d promised it would be so, yet here he stands, not at a coronation but at a firing squad.  The air is still, no wind, no voices, barely even a breath.  Then the sound of blasters.  Then nothing again.  

In all honesty it is a blessing, this end.  Far more likely that he sits in a dirty cell, in the depths of some inconsequential yet highly guarded ruin of a prison.  One of his own perhaps, liberated by the New Republic and newly outfitted just for him.  So kind of them to customize such lovely accommodations.  No light but a small sliver of sunlight through a crack in a boarded up window.  Food through a flap at precise times of day that he never touches.  The smell of dirt and humidity, but not a comfort like the smell of his pond..  It is putrid and rotting.   He wastes away surrounded by the ghosts of his past glories.  Those he can wave a way with a still regal brush of a hand, but the smirking ghost of Ren cannot so easily be dismissed.  

No.

Hux comes back to himself, as much as one can in a dream inside a dream.  That will not be the way.  He will not be left to fade into antiquity.  

Alone.  

Forgotten.

Insignificant.

A thin slip of paper no more, Hux will not succumb to this weakness.  Hux pushes Kylo against the wall, hand wrapped tightly around his throat.   

“No one stands in my way, Ren.  Not even you.”  He feels Kylo’s heartbeat, blood pulsing under his fingers desperate to continue flowing, as he squeezes tighter and tighter.  He is killing him.  He can see the shock on Ren’s face but he does not reach out for the Force to stop him.  He is killing him but it is not the satisfying experience that he’d always imagined it to be.  He drops his hands and Ren crumples to the floor.  

“If it’s any consolation, I didn’t enjoy it.”  Speaking to corpses is never as satisfying as he imagines either.

****

* * *

 

Hux stands on a diving board above an abandoned swimming pool on Arkanis.  He is younger now, probably mid-twenties, naked, scrawny, and scared. His surroundings are dull and grey, a moment before the rain hits and Starkiller rises like the sun on the horizon.  Instead of water, the pool is filled with black liquid.  Kylo Ren emerges from the pool, reaching for him, a hungry look on his face.  Beckoning him into the warm sludge that caresses broad shoulders and wraps around him like a tattered cloak.   Hux can no longer deny that the idea is somewhat appealing.  Following Kylo down into the depths of the darkness, harnessing his power and then rising victorious over all.  But of course that’s not what would happen.  No, he will simply drag Hux to the depths and leave him there broken and alone if he agrees to follow.  That thought is not altogether unappealing either.   When did the look on Ren’s face turn from enticing to terrified?  His hand is now outstretched in a silent plea for help.  Hux stands there watching Kylo drown.   If he continues to stand there shivering, Ren will die.  Again. How many times must he die to just finally just stay dead?  Hux needs him by his side and needs for him to die.  He hates Ren.  He loves Ren.  Just as he both hates and loves himself.  Hux knows he can’t save him.  He can’t save his men and he can’t save himself, but the worst is knowing without a shadow of a doubt that he doesn’t know if he would even want to if he could.  It does not strike him odd that he cares so deeply about not caring at all.

The rain never falls at Armitage’s pool.  If drops deign to touch his skin they are of thick warm blood.  And so it goes today.  He smells the warmth and comfort of the imminent storm but tastes a sweet metallic tang on his tongue and the bitterness of adrenaline in his throat.  He turns his face to the sky and the first drops roll down his cheeks, warm and serene.   His eyes flutter closed and he sees only stars behind his lids and it’s like having a home.  Hux is splashed by a young boy who paddles happily through his pool, still choked in inky blackness.  It’s the same boy from so long ago.  The embodiment of chaos that invaded Hux’s sanctuary and never really left.  With this chaos, it seems that Hux’s world stutters to an almost lyrical stillness.  The choice is clear, but the answer decidedly not so.  Jump in and follow or turn and leave this place, _his place_ , forever.  The boy smiles at him.  He has Ren’s eyes.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> There is a beautiful choral setting of the poem the title is taken from that you can listen to here:
> 
> [There Will Be Rest - Frank Ticheli](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-IFPmY-RQ) 


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